Today was my favorite day of the trip this far. We started the morning off with a double decker bus ride to JCC. At first I was nervous to sit in on one of their classes but I’m so grateful I did. One of the cool things about this college is that they have an adult learning section for refugees that want to speak english. While they start off with the basics of learning the english language, they also teach maths, media classes, vocational classes and much more. This gives these adults an opportunity to start a new life here in the UK. Additionaly, the school provides support in setting up bank accounts, links to jobs/careers, funding childcare and so much more. The government also pays for these students to attend if an individual make under 30,000 pounds a year. They currently have 1162 students enrolled and recive 2.6 million from the government so they can contiune to give oppertunities to these people trying to make a life for themselves. Besdies the adult learning, they also have a school for 16-19 year olds. The same benefits apply to them, and they help set them up for the potential of attending university. An intresting thing about the UK is that their “sixth form college” is more of high school, and then univeristy is their form of college. Overall, the campus is not only physically beautiful, but also having a deeper beautiful meaning. Pride stuff lines the walls along with metions of diversity, acceptance and inclusion.

This is a picture of my group mogging in our visitor pass pictures:

After visitng JCC, we went back to BCU to learn about disability nursing. In the UK it is defined as “a reduced ability to understand complex information or new skills or reduced ability to cope independently “. It is also the smalled nursing field. Some of the causes for learning disabilities included, mother’s illness during pregnancy, trauma and genetics. Right now 1.5 million people are diagnosed with a learning disability with 2.16% being adults and 2.5% being children. They work under the Mental Capacity Act which states that everyone has capacity to make desicions unless proven otherwise. One sad fact I learned from this was that, up untill the 1900s people with learning disabilities would be medically diagnosed with rude terms such as “imbecile, feebleminded, and lunatic”. It crazy how misunderstood learning disabilities are and that they just recently got the research to prove that these people wern’t sick or crazy. I also learned that they would work under Eugenics, meaning they would not be allowed to have kids as it would put “imperfections” into the population.

After all of our lessons were done, we took a walk to the botanical gardens. I knew I was going to like it there as the coversvatory in Pittsburgh is one of my favortie places to go. They had an adorable gift shop where I was able to get my friends and family back home a little souvenir. I

Tonight, all of us are going to eat at an Italian restaurant that is right by our hotel. I’m very excited for this because everytime any of us walk past it, we talk about how good the food smells. I’m hoping I can find something I like here as it will be what I typically eat back home.

Overall, this was such an amazing day and It really created a beautiful outlook on life for me learning about everything that the UK is doing! I can’t wait to learn from other lessons and experience more of the beautiful city of Birmingham!!